I wrote this post for my non-profit’s blog and decided to re-post it here with some added commentary not present in the original post. Enjoy!
Serving could mean a lot of things to a lot of people and many of those ways of serving won’t all look the same. And that’s ok. I was thinking recently about this thing called serving and what it means to truly serve others. This lead me to start thinking about where the impetus of that service can come from if we are viewing that service through the eyes of faith.
(Personally, I do not compartmentalize faith. We all believe in something even if it’s not God or a Higher Power. Maybe we believe in science. Whatever that is, faith is present. However, my faith is specifically that of faith in God so it makes sense that I draw meaning from scripture as it pertains to the stuff of life. Moving on…)
Micah 6:8 says this: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Or another translation says it this way, which I think is pretty powerful: “But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, and don’t take yourself too seriously.”
I love that.
(Let’s pause here and reflect for a moment. Regardless of your particular brand of faith, or lack thereof, would you not agree that being fair and just and compassionate and loyal are good things to be towards others?)
Fair. Compassionate. Humble. Simple, right?
(It’s actually not always simple because we all define these things differently. I think the key here is asking good questions and also movement. How can I give more grace? How can I be more compassionate? In what ways can I exhibit humility more? The idea here is to move towards more grace, more compassion and more humility, wherever that is for you.)
I was raised being told “fair” doesn’t exist. Yet we all carry these varying definitions of what is fair, especially when it comes to other people, social injustices and morality. But what I would encourage us to focus on is much simpler and basic, which is grace. We have all been given grace and grace is what makes us just. If we can think of the grace we’ve been given and extend that to others, that is a huge step towards fairness because God bestows his grace out on all. In Matthew we are reminded of this grace-for-all approach:
“This is what God does. He gives His best – the sun to warm and the rain to nourish – to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that…Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
(What a gift! If God does his best FOR ALL regardless of good or bad then why don’t we? One of the most awful things I heard from someone was attributing an illness a person had, to God punishing them for something. What a sad view of God. Here we see he bestows grace and ‘His best’ ON ALL.)
Living a life filled with compassion for others simply put, is freeing. Why? Because it absolutely requires we lay down judgement. When we judge others our minds become clouded and our hearts hardened. Compassion cannot thrive in this internal environment. All too often we are afraid to set judgement aside, believing our judgement is what causes another person to see truth or God’s grace.
(When did we get the idea we have to do something to warrant or activate God’s grace and forgiveness? I think judgement comes from places inside us that have yet to truly grasp grace. Grace for ourselves and grace for others.)
Which leads me to humility.
Judgement sets us up as the expert, the one who has it all figured out. But we see at the end of this Micah passage, we are encouraged to walk humbly. One definition of humility is, to submit to divine grace! There’s grace again! It’s all connected.
When we are truly in touch with the grace that works in and through us, we can choose to walk humbly so that we can act with compassion towards others.
Can you imagine a world where we served in this way?
